


Mythic Overtones

by tree_and_leaf



Category: Doctor Who, Inklings RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:28:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree_and_leaf/pseuds/tree_and_leaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oxford, some time in the fifties.  Frederica Ward, academic and author of a successful series of SF novels about a time travelling alien who wanders space-time in a police box, is struggling with the nagging feeling that her creations are coming to life and following her around.  And why can't she bring herself to throw out the pocket watch her birth parents left her?  It's not like it's ever worked...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mythic Overtones

Frederica Ward, tutor of Mathematics and fellow of Shrewsbury, pulled her gown straighter around her shoulders, and wished, not for the first time, that the regulations on academic dress had been made with an eye to the fact that Schools took place in June (the finalists were given enough to trying to ruin their own health without adding cases of heatstroke during exams into the equation). Or that she hadn't been appointed Proctor, and so didn't have to sweat through the University Sermon in filthy bombazine and what she couldn't help suspecting made her look like an overgrown school-girl. It hadn't even been a _good_ sermon.

On the other hand, the discomfort was something of a welcome distraction from her own worries.

"Miss Ward!" She turned, and found she was being addressed by a rather shambling figure, who might have been mistaken for a tramp by those who knew no better.

"Professor Lewis! Beastly weather, isn't it? Half our finalists are on the verge of heatstroke, and half the second year won't stop trying to sunbathe in the quad in nothing but their underwear. I've rarely been so glad not to be Dean."

"Perfectly understandable… How's the book coming?"

"If you mean that textbook on calculus I foolishly agreed to write, I don't want to talk about it."

"I meant the next installment of the Doctor's adventures, as well you know."

"I don't want to talk about that, either."

"Oh dear," Lewis grimaced. "Stuck? Would a pint one evening help?"

Frederica sighed. "Perhaps. I'm not stuck, exactly. It's just… Have you ever had the feeling that you've met one of your characters? It's horribly disconcerting."

"You finally noticed the Chaplain of Balliol, then?"

"No, I… what? Roy Ridley? What's he got to do with it?"

Lewis shrugged. "I always thought he was rather close to how you described the Doctor. The fifth version. No? What happened, then?"

"It was on the way here this morning. There I was, walking down St Giles, minding my own business, when a skinny young man in a pinstriped suit with absolutely disastrous hair looked at me, turned chalk white, mumbled something incoherent, and took off at high speed down Pusey Street. Where, I couldn't help noticing, there was a police box that I'm almost sure never used to be there."

"Are you sure it wasn't just an undergraduate with a bad conscience inspired by your proctorial garb?"

"Possibly. But he looked exactly as I imagine the current Doctor. Exactly."

"Including the shoes?"

"Yes, including the shoes. And you didn't answer my question."

Lewis was silent. Then he said, "Tolkien swears he once met Gandalf, you know. He asked him if he thought he'd actually written the whole thing himself." He paused. "And the answer to your question is, yes and no. Or rather, only the ones that I didn't make up myself."

"That," said Frederica, "was what was worrying me. It's all very well if you're working with mythic archetypes or allegories, anyway, but if it's science fiction about wandering aliens fighting metal monsters in defence of the earth, it's rather – well, disconcerting."

"Oh, I wouldn't underestimate the Doctor's mythic aspect," said Lewis, "You don't draw attention to it over-much – which is probably wise – but it is there. I've always thought of him as Merlin, with a touch of Brer Rabbit."

"Mm," said Frederica, unconvinced. Then she sighed. "I must be off – meeting my sister for lunch – , but we ought to have that pint soon. Later this week any good to you?"

Date agreed, she set off up the Turl, trying not to think about the fact that suddenly her own sister's face was less vivid to her than that of one of her own creations, and trying to ignore the nagging feeling that she was in the wrong life entirely. She was a scholar, a teacher, and a writer, and this was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Her hand strayed into her pocket, touching her talisman, the hunter that was all that was left of her blood parents. She sometimes wondered why she kept it – her adoptive family were very dear to her, and the thing was broken, but she didn't like to be without it.

"Oh, buck up, Fred, you're being silly," she muttered to herself.

Perhaps a watchmaker would be able to fix the watch.


End file.
